U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a healthier year and festive in a shiny, high-necked red jacket, swept by like a force of nature as the doors opened and the crowd surged from the lobby into the auditorium of Washington’s Lansburgh Theatre. No doubt Ginsburg, the subject of a feature film set to open over the holidays, had good seats for this Oscar Wilde comedy. My wife and I had tickets for “nosebleed seats” in the last row of the balcony, farthest from the stage, but we weren’t complaining: The tickets were compliments of my wife’s younger sister, Nancy Robinette, one of the leads in the play.

That’s what happens when your neighbours are public figures and your wife’s younger sister is one of Washington’s best-known actresses, having earned the most nominations ever for the prestigious Helen Hayes Awards and winning Hayes awards numerous times. (She’s also acted on Broadway and in movies.)

Crowd appeal

The audiences are roaring in Washington these days. According to a time-worn axiom, it’s the “smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd” that make live theatre so intoxicating for actors and audiences alike. The greasepaint has long been supplanted by a gamut of modern makeup techniques and potions, but Washington’s prominence in American theatre is well documented.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as seen from Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River.Ron Blunt /
John F. Kennedy Center

The seven venues at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts alone account for more than 3,500 shows each year for an audience of more than two million people. In fact, annual ticket sales in Washington make it the fifth largest theatre city in the U.S. and, with 45 theatres and 27,000 theatre seats, the largest south of New York and east of Chicago. And Nancy is just one of a whopping 1,194 paid Actors’ Equity Association members performing regularly on the Washington stage. (Actor’s Equity is the labor union for acting professionals.)

Washington’s theatre scene is just one aspect of its cultural pedigree. The Data Arts cultural think tank has used empirical data to rate the Washington area as having the third-most “vibrant” arts scene in the United States, thanks largely to its unusually well-educated population of 5 million people who are also above-average income earners.

But vibrant isn’t the word many would have used to describe the Washington theatre scene just a few decades ago. A dormant cultural scene was rescued by the Arena Stage, a theatre that quickly became known for its edgy dramas, and the now-defunct Washington Theater Club. Together with the 1971 opening of the Kennedy Center, the official memorial to President Kennedy, they sparked an explosion in the performing arts.

Living history

Like many sites in Washington, some of the city’s theatres have figured in history. Ford’s Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was shot, is as popular as it was on that fateful night in1865 when he and Mary Todd Lincoln watched Our American Cousin, a frothy comedy. Now operated by the U.S. National Park Service, it mainly presents familiar productions — The Wiz and Death of a Salesman in 2018, among other productions, while the 2017 season was highlighted by Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Come from Away, the hit New York musical about how Gander, Newfoundland welcomed thousands of stranded airline passengers after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Fordâs theatre, where U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot, is still a working theatre.McKenzie

Ford’s also includes a museum about the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination that includes murderer John Wilkes Booth’s firearms, Lincoln’s clothes from that night and many other artifacts. The Petersen House, the boarding house across the street where Lincoln was taken and where he died from his wounds, is open to visitors as well.

Founded in 1950 and quickly a pioneer of the regional theatre movement, Arena Stage first welcomed audiences to temporary quarters in a theatre that was, in its final days, home to strip shows. By 1960, it had moved into its permanent home, a striking space on the banks of the Potomac River with seats on four sides surrounding the stage. The structure was considered so historic that 50 years later, when the theatre started making plans to expand, it was forced to preserve the original theatre building and build around it. The result is the spectacular, multi-auditorium structure designed by the late Vancouver architect Bing Thom that stands today and is just a stone’s throw from District Wharf, a lively new restaurant-and-entertainment area with a riverfront promenade.

The expansion of Washingtonâs Arena Stage was designed by Vancouver architect Bing Thom.Martin W.G. King

The resplendent Warner Theatre, with a gilded red and gold interior, started out in 1924 as a burlesque house that quickly switched to silent films. The lone surviving movie palace in Washington, it had decayed badly by the late 1960s and was showing X-rated movies. It has been meticulously restored at a cost of millions.

Not to be outdone, the Kennedy Center is also resplendent with a lot of red (and gold). The dramatic red and black curtain in its Eisenhower Theatre was a gift from Canada. Also on the Potomac but several miles from Arena Stage, the centre’s vast public areas include foyer-level and rooftop promenades with spectacular views of the river and Virginia on the far shore.

Steeply discounted

Washington is your city if you want to see first-rate productions, including touring Broadway musicals, at much less than what you’d pay for tickets, meals and hotel rooms in New York.

Here’s a partial rundown of what’s playing now and into the spring, listed in date order within each category.

• The Jewish Queen Lear, March 13-April 7, Theater J: The1898 classic about the power and pride of a Jewish mother, widow and businesswoman.

• The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963, March 15-19, Kennedy Center: World premiere of a play for young people about how an African-American family from Michigan endures the horror of the 1960s Deep South.

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